Sir Rhodes Boyson was minister for social security for only a year (1983-84), but during that time he amended the supplementary benefit regulations to make it easier for residents of private and voluntary care homes on low incomes to claim their fees from the social security system. Assessment of financial need, not the social, physical or mental health of those seeking care, determined eligibility.

Social security spending ballooned from £6m in 1978 to £460m in 1988 and £1.3bn in 1991. It also meant that the number of places in care homes rose dramatically. This created what Sir Roy Griffiths's review, commissioned by Margaret Thatcher, referred to as a "perverse incentive" to encourage older people to enter residential care rather than be looked after in their own homes.

Griffiths's reforms clamped down on the spending, but not before Boyson had both pushed it through the roof and given a massive kickstart to the private sector in social care which has continued apace ever since.